Backwards text in PDFs

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Backwards text in PDFs Tue Feb 04, 2020 12:00 pm • by davidl
When I use a Match condition on a PDF, I sometimes get backwards/mirrored text. It's sometimes the entire document or just a portion of the text.
Example:

sliateD tnemyaP ruoY

Has anyone experienced this? Any ideas on transforming it back to normal?

While I don't yet know how to pull it into a worksheet app, I'm attempting to extract gross pay from a pdf of a paystub. I'm able to match on a custom text attribute (dollar amount) when it's in the correct direction but not when it's backwards. I haven't tried creating a custom attribute with the numbers in backwards order, but I imagine it wouldn't work because of the mirrored aspect.
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Re: Backwards text in PDFs Tue Feb 04, 2020 12:38 pm • by Mr_Noodle
Do you have any languages settings in your system for right-to-left writing?
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Re: Backwards text in PDFs Tue Feb 04, 2020 1:02 pm • by davidl
If preferences is the only place to set it then no, I don't.
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Re: Backwards text in PDFs Wed Feb 05, 2020 11:20 am • by Mr_Noodle
Can you email in a document showing this problem? Preferably one without any sensitive info.
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Re: Backwards text in PDFs Tue May 12, 2020 2:29 pm • by charltoncalhoun
I'm having the same issue. I've checked my language & region preferences and don't have any right-to-left languages set up.
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Re: Backwards text in PDFs Wed May 13, 2020 9:39 am • by Mr_Noodle
Please email in a sample document demonstrating this.
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Re: Backwards text in PDFs Wed May 13, 2020 9:44 am • by charltoncalhoun
Mr_Noodle wrote:Please email in a sample document demonstrating this.

Thanks, happy to! What email address?
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Re: Backwards text in PDFs Thu May 14, 2020 9:56 am • by Mr_Noodle
Click on the "Contact support" button in Hazel's "Info" pane.
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Re: Backwards text in PDFs Thu Jul 09, 2020 5:53 pm • by charltoncalhoun
This is frustrating because one of my major workflows is failing due to the reversed text. I've found a workaround, but it's manual and I have to do this for every document:
When reviewing the PDF document properties in Acrobat Pro, I found the "language" box within the Reading Options setting is empty. If I change that setting to "English" and save the document, my workflow runs correctly. I realize that it should run correctly even when the language is blank by reverting to my system defaults - which on my Mac is set to Region: United States.
Does anyone know of other settings I could check? Thanks so much!
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Re: Backwards text in PDFs Mon Mar 14, 2022 3:19 am • by mardi
A couple of years since this thread started and there doesn't seem to have been a resolution - this is happening for me. I tried changing the properties as suggested in the last post but that doesn't work. Any ideas?
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